In general, optical fiber cables comprise a protective sheath often made of composite material and include a set of optical fibers which are disposed either with or without reserves of extra length in or around a carrier element which protects them against traction forces.
When connecting optical fiber cables, the optical fibers must be glued or welded end-to-end while oonserving any spare length. The carrier elements must be interconnected and the protective sheath must be reconstituted. This is all done using connection boxes such as that described in French patent No. 2 519 149 (equals U.S. Pat. No. 4,516,830). The connection box is in the form of a container tube which is closed at both ends by covers which are fixed to the cable carrier elements and through which the optical fibers pass, with the outside of the tube being coated with a protective sheath which is connected to the sheaths of the cables. The container tube constitutes a splice box for the optical fibers and together with its covers it provides mechanical continuity for the carrier elements of the cables being connected. It encloses a cylindrical mandrel which is used as a support on to which the ends of the pairwise connected optical fibers are wound, with the ends of the mandrel being hollow and provided with lateral openings through which the optical fibers pass after passing through the covers for the purpose of connection around the periphery thereof.
This type of connection box suffers from the drawback of not protecting the optical fibers from risks due to the twisting to which they may be subjected, in particular on passing through the mandrel and also in the event of pinching due to a handling error by an operator when the container tube is being put into place over the mandrel when the box is being closed. The present invention seeks to avoid these drawbacks while facilitating connection operations. PG,3